Sunday, August 16, 2009

At first I thought it was one of those questions like, "So Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" The subject line was on an email from a friend with a Wall Street Journal article attached about Woodstock that described the music as "marred" by complications like poor sound quality and bands that were no-shows. I guess I've grown a little defensive since the media frenzy escalated on the occasion of the 40th anniversary where it seems everybody has an opinion. In response to him for what it's worth, here's mine:

I went to Woodstock at 17 with my then boyfriend, Robbie, and I loved the music, particularly Country Joe and his F cheer with the military choppers flying over and the guys flashing the peace sign and then Santana who blew us away and who nobody'd heard of since they didn't have a single record out yet.

What's most amazing to me is the hostility from people who either didn't go or are gen x or something and blame boomers for everything from the stock market to SUVs. Glad they stayed away or were too young or it would have been an entirely different scene.

I was pretty shocked when I mentioned it to some musicians on a forum and one guy jumped down my throat saying "oh yeah, we all went to Woodstock" as if I was lying. I've given up mentioning it, especially these days. Instead I emailed Robbie on Friday after not being in contact since 1970 (what would I do without Google) and he answered right back telling me he was watching the movie on TV the other night and was wondering what ever happened to me.

Great op-ed piece in the Times (below) but even there, many comments repeated "where's the picture of you to prove it." Obviously they don't get it at all. It was all about spontaneity. Guess they missed the point of the article where Gail Collins writes, "The lesson I took away from it is that whenever anybody asks you to do something off the wall, you should really try to do it." She adds, "When I was actually at Woodstock, it never occurred to me anybody was going to want to discuss it 40 years down the road." Or, I add, that we'd have to prove our having gone as the-god's-honest-truth. Hey talk to my mom. It was her car I returned covered with mud inside and out (that never crossed my mind to bottle and save.)

We read about the "Aquarian Exposition in White Lake NY" in an ad in the playbill from the Fillmore East (yes they had playbills and no I didn't think to save any of them either) and decided to go "check it out" at the last minute without tickets, driving up Rt 206 to 209 from Jersey and having to ditch the car just west of the Monticello harness racetrack to hike the last seven miles. How many of us thought to bring a camera? Or food? Or water (no bottled crap those days)? I mean, WHO KNEW??

Our return home was uneventful except for that humongous haystack (as in the needle-in-a-haystack kind, not to be confused with a hay bale) I came upon in the dark in the middle of my lane that I had to swerve past. I can't prove that either, even to Robbie who was sitting next to me in the passenger seat, fast asleep.

August 15, 2009Op-Ed ColumnistTo Be Old and in WoodstockBy GAIL COLLINS

Forty years ago this weekend, I was at the Woodstock concert, and now I am getting alarmed about all the retrospectives. They’re beginning to make me feel like Frank Buckles, the 108-year-old last surviving veteran of World War I. Although I will never come up with a line as good as Frank’s secret to a long life. (“When you start to die, don’t.”)

Also, it has brought back my concern about the fact that I do not have any memory whatsoever of having heard any music. Woodstock-wise, I am the walking definition of anhedonia.

I spent a lot of time trying to talk a state policeman into helping me charge the battery on the car I had borrowed from my boyfriend. And, having left the picnic basket behind on the front porch, I was in charge of finding food for myself, my brother and the six friends who came with us. This took a great deal of time, and involved making my way to a little town down the road, where the store shelves had been stripped nearly bare and the people seemed to feel as if they were living out an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

Fortunately, it turned out that eight people could live on peanut butter and marshmallow fluff for much longer than you might imagine.

But it was still a great adventure. The lesson I took away from it is that whenever anybody asks you to do something off the wall, you should really try to do it — unless it involves being unethical or a two-plane connection. You might not enjoy it while it’s going on, but somewhere down the line the anecdotes will always come in handy.

When I was actually at Woodstock, it never occurred to me anybody was going to want to discuss it 40 years down the road. In fact, the only time I envisioned the concert having any impact on my future was on the way home when I decided all of us were going to die in a massive traffic jam.

It was already dark when a girl walked up to my car — which was easy to approach, since we hadn’t moved for several hours — and said something like: “All the people ahead are going to sleep, so you might as well just settle down for the night.”

Then she gave me a flower and walked away. This was a sweet gesture, but I was so overwhelmed by the wish that the flower was, say, a saltine cracker, that I didn’t really respond.

As the hours slowly ticked by, I decided that the cars were never going to move again — and that months later rescuers would find our desiccated bodies, some collapsed behind the wheel, others slumped over the glove compartment where they expired while searching for a stray cough drop.

I fantasized that this mass tragedy would cause all the people over 30 to regret the terrible way that they had ignored the wise advice that the younger generation had been offering on how to run the world. Then the much-discussed revolution would finally occur, the world would achieve peace and harmony and we would be remembered as the Woodstock Martyrs who made it all happen.

Or, you know, we might just decide to get out of the cars and walk.

The Woodstock-mania must drive young people crazy since it is yet another reminder that the baby-boom generation is never going to stop talking about the stuff it did, and that when they are old themselves there will probably still be some 108-year-old telling them how everybody slept in the mud but that it was worth it because Janis Joplin sounded so awesome and the people were all mellow.

Current younger generation, I know you would be equally good-natured if you found yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the world with 400,000 other people and a bunch of bands. But it will never happen because although you will have many, many fine adventures of your own, you will never be cut off.

My sister-in-law Laura just got back from the Lollapalooza concert in Chicago, which was the exact opposite of Woodstock in the sense that it was an extremely pleasant way for a middle-aged person to spend a weekend.

The thing that struck her most — besides the misting tents, the lobster corndogs and the truffled popcorn — was that “at any point you could look around and 50 percent of the people were texting or reading a text. Which is fine for keeping in touch, but I wonder how truly involved you can get with the music.”

As the person who went to Woodstock and didn’t see the concert, I can’t really comment on that last point. But 40 years ago, I knew eight people who would have killed for that lobster corndog.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

1. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" - Dr. Strangelove2. "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." - Silence of the Lambs3. "I think we're gonna need a bigger boat." - Jaws4. "The Second Rule of Fight Club is you DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB" - Fight Club 5. "I like to watch." - Being There

Monday, March 2, 2009

but if you try sometime well you just might find you get what you need. - M. Jagger, K. Richards

I'm posting this video here less a commentary on Gen X, Y or Z but as an appreciation for our remarkable technologies that we have come to rely on so much so that we forget how far we've come.

I mean, we put men on the moon before pocket calculators! (Remember bulky gray adding machines with the hand crank?) Mind-blowing!

It occurs to me that this financial mess we're in is an opportunity not only to develop new "green" technologies by retooling the workforce but also of retooling the mindset from what we expect and think we deserve to what we actually need.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

For me, my muse has lately been coming not from a clinking glass but from solitude and dreams.

The fact of the matter is I've become something of a hermit since New Year's, only opening the door to let the dogs out or to stick out my arm to grab the mail. And it's because of this isolation, I think, that my (always lucid) dreaming has evolved into entire mental manuscripts of fiction. Each night my bedtime comes later and later, mostly now around four to five in the morning. Then, depending on how interesting the story is getting, I get up around noon.

The oddest part of this is not that it often takes me days to fully realize the dream didn't actually happen but that, when I finally had to emerge from this strangely productive hibernation in order to meet with my accountant over my income taxes, what followed has me having a difficult time believing wasn't a dream.

After leaving the accountant, I decided the outside world wasn't such a bad place after all so I stopped to get a newspaper and a booth at the local cafe. It was Monday so, with most stores closed in this tourist town, it was empty enough inside that I could listen to the conversations at the counter.

There's a sense of calm that comes from a place of rattling plates in the busboy's tray, the "What can I get you?" and the rhythmic stirring of coffee cups. It's even better in winter with snowflakes littering the sidewalk outside the fogged up windows and woolen hats and scarfs hanging on the coat racks.

Before I'd finished my first cup of coffee, a man with wild brown hair came in, shut the door behind him and headed for a small table by the opposite wall. He sat down, opened a satchel and took out a sheet of white paper as waitresses walked by with steaming pots of coffee and calls of, "Hi Tom," one adding, "Be with you in a minute."

I watched as he sat, head bent over so far that his nose was inches off the piece of paper flat on the table before him. Every few minutes he'd pick it up and squint at it and I could see that it was blank except for a few small squarish chunks of lines that came down from the upper left corner.

I'd seen the guy before, walking down the hill to town, smoking cigarettes and holding that satchel in his arms, one of the group-home-guys as they came to be known. But now he was "Tom" - and maybe even a poet. I had to know.

When I finished my coffee and went over to pay the bill, I stopped by his table, "Excuse me," I asked, "is that a poem?"

"Yes, yes it is."

Tom offered to let me read it and apologized for how small the font was.

"Why don't you make it bigger?"

"I like it that way," he said.

I learned that Tom grew up a town away from mine and went on to study philosophy at Williams College, then Rutgers for the graduate program in English. He lasted a week, then the paranoia set in.

So here I'd had the pleasure of meeting one of the group-home-guys who happens to write incredibly brilliant poetry in a font size so small it is barely perceptible.

And it's still hard for me not to believe that this was the dream - and the actual real dream I had this morning wasn't. In it I went to a real estate open house at the home where a schoolmate of mine and her little boy were stabbed to death by her husband. (The stabbings were horribly real. It was the open house that was the dream.) From room to room I recalled the newspaper account.

"The police discovered the five-year-old's body in the kitchen covered in blood." I stood in the kitchen looking down at the floor.

"His little brother, barely alive, was found under the coffee table in the living room." No coffee table now. Just a spotless beige carpet.

"The woman was dead in the basement." My mind drew a yellow chalk outline.

"Out back, he jumped out of the bushes wielding a knife and was shot to death by Patrolman Peterson." I didn't make it to the backyard.

I told the realtor she'd never sell it. The only thing left was to reduce it to rubble and make it disappear.

Most influential later:Linda MaCarristan – Eva-MaryAudre Lorde – Zami: A New Spelling of My NameJudy Grahn – Another Mother TongueMarilyn Hacker – Love, Death and the Changing of the SeasonsMary Oliver – Dream WorkMarie Howe – What the Living DoMarie Howe – The Good ThiefLucille Clifton – The Book of LightAlicia Ostriker – The Crack in Everything

I can't remember the last time I so thoroughly enjoyed a piece. In one of today's NY Times blogs:

Under the Literary InfluenceBy Brian McDonald

Standing behind a bar for much of my early adulthood, I wasn’t a big reader. My literary inclinations were limited to the New York Post’s sports section and the Daily Racing Form when a friend handed me a Raymond Chandler novel. “Go ahead,” he said. “It won’t kill you.” I read just the one, put it down, and really didn’t give it much thought.

But this is how addictions begin, subtly and then suddenly. Soon I found myself devouring every hard-boiled word of Chandler’s. And then I read them again. I started talking in similes and metaphors. One day I told a dear friend that he had a face like a collapsed lung. I couldn’t help myself. A progression took hold. Chandler led me to Hammett and from Hammett I staggered to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald led me to Hemingway.

Sure, what drew me to these writers were their words: some terse and declarative, others colorful and descriptive. But the attraction also held something far more sinister: the subtle sound of ice clinking in a glass, the muted laughter of an inside joke told a few tables away, the seductive swirl of cigarette smoke climbing to the barroom ceiling. I couldn’t get enough.

Throughout my early 30s, my reading addiction began to conspire against me. I found myself working behind the bar at Elaine’s and there I came face-to-face with my demon.For almost 50 years Elaine Kaufman has attracted writers to her restaurant as though she were giving away royalty checks. And though not all of them turned me on, there were a few who, when they walked through the door, had me jonesing like a street junkie. Late one night Hunter S. Thompson sat by himself at a back table lighting shots of Bacardi 151 rum with his Zippo and firing them down the hatch. I don’t remember how many flaming shots he drank — but I do remember the last one. Something had gone horribly wrong with his technique. When I looked back at him he was on fire. Only the quick thinking of Carlo the waiter, who snatched a nearby tablecloth and used it to smother the blue flames, saved Dr. Thompson from escalating into a three-alarm blaze.

If you were there that night at Elaine’s, no doubt you would have seen a drunk, crazy man who had set his own hands on fire. But what I saw was a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers … and a pint of raw ether.

The day after the Thompson immolation, I read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in my studio apartment, the door locked, the phone turned off, the shades drawn. I found myself wandering the streets for more. Thompson led me to Jack Kerouac and Kerouac to Charles Bukowski. Eventually it was the plays of Eugene O’Neill. My bookshelf began to sag under the weight of drunken writers.

I knew things were bad when I started buying the biographies of the writers I craved: Truman Capote, Fitzgerald and Chandler. From these texts, I learned that Chandler would sober up when he wrote. He would retreat to his cabin in the California hills and white-knuckle his words onto the page, every one of them bringing him closer to his next drink. I knew that Capote often drank martinis while writing “In Cold Blood.” I read Scott Fitzgerald’s letters from France begging his editor, Maxwell Perkins, for money to pay bar tabs and buy cigarettes.

It was all so intoxicating. Capote once said that he drank because “it’s the only time I can stand it.” His reasoning probably sounded convoluted to most, but seemed perfectly logical to me. When your addiction begins to swallow you the only way to endure the pain is to swallow back. I got to the point where I read my favorite writers because I couldn’t stand it.

The reality of my favorite writers’ lives, at least the ends of their lives, wasn’t romantic at all. Hemingway and, later, Hunter chose the coward’s way out; Chandler tried his hardest to join them. He went into the shower one day with a loaded pistol and pulled the trigger twice. Only by the grace of God — and the fact that he was schnockered to the eyeballs — did he miss both times. Most of the rest of my bookshelf had drunk themselves into early dirt naps.

All seemed hopeless. That night I lay on my couch clutching an old, stained copy of “The Long Goodbye” to my breast and cried myself to sleep.

The next morning, I awoke, emotionally weakened and physically drained, and made my way to a nearby Barnes & Noble. There a salesperson named Daniel gently led me to the memoir section. At first I recoiled. No, I cried, anything but this! I needed a whiskey-soaked fiction bad. But Daniel handed me Pete Hamill’s “A Drinking Life.” I read it slowly, doubting every page. But then something miraculous happened before I was halfway through: I liked it. I liked it a lot.

This new reading life wasn’t easy. The urge to slip back to my old ways was strong. I took it one book at a time. Hamill led the way to Mary Karr’s “Cherry,” then “Home Before Dark,” Susan Cheever’s memoir of life with her father, John Cheever. Soon I had a whole new bookshelf given over to writers who wrote just like my beloved boozers but did so in the past tense.

I haven’t felt the need to pick up a Chandler or Hammett for five years now, and my reading horizons have opened considerably. I still enjoy a good boozy memoir every now and then — J.R. Moehringer’s “The Tender Bar” is one that comes to mind — but I’ve discovered that there are libraries filled with writers who never needed liquor as a muse.

Still, it’s not like Hammett, Chandler and the rest don’t call to me. They do. They exist deep in my soul, having their bourbons and hammering away at their typewriters. I keep them safely down there by helping others addicted to drunken writers. They’re easy to spot. They gather in front of the Strand scouring the $1 racks, they have rings around their eyes from all night reading sessions, they talk in similes. The other day one of them told me I had a head like a bucket of mud.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

I'm being followed...by a Congressman...not even from my state...who is the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

To be a little more specific, I'm being followed on Twitter. The guy is following my "tweets" - as if they're mind-freaking fascinating. Which they're not. My current tweet: "Skye wants to run away but doesn't feel like going outside"

It all started when I was watching Rachel Maddow and she happened to mention Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-MI and how he had been using Twitter on his Blackberry throughout his visit to Iraq happily announcing...

Well, here's the email I sent out after googling him and signing up to follow his Twitter (along with 3,987 other people):

Subject: Congressman Tweets His Way (and location) Through War Zone

Hey kids, want some excitement? Follow Hoekstra's Twitter and see if his entourage is attacked!!

Monday, February 16, 2009

My results from taking the "How Liberal Are You, You Dirty Hippie?" on facebook:

You're so left-wing that you cause car accidents due to the fact that you refuse to make right turns. Your list of achievements include being able to sing Kumbaya out of key in 7 different languages, knowing how to score hallucinogens in any part of the country on a modest budget, and being able to draw a perfect circle in case you need to draw a peace sign or a symbolic vagina. You are valiant in your endless fight against the Man, whom you have identified as mixture of George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, and that guy from Perfect Strangers (no real reason, he just pissed you off). Some people may not understand you, and others may call you weird, but you don't care what others think. Peace, love, and happiness!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3,361 of 3,416 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great lesson for the kids!
By loosenut Seattle WA

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.
The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I've heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I'll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush.)

My family was planning a vacation to Europe, so I purchased this item to teach my twins about what to expect at the airport and hopefully, alleviate some of their anxiety. We also downloaded the actual TSA security checklist from the American Airlines website and then proceeded with our demonstration. Well, first we had to round up a Barbie and a few Bratz dolls to play the other family members, so that cost us a few extra bucks at the Dollar General and it is aggravating that the manufacturer did not make this product "family-friendly." Of course, since the playmobil Dad could not remove his shoes or other clothing items, unlike the Barbie, the playmobil security agent became suspicious and after waving her wand wildy a few dozen times, called her supervisor to wisk the Dad into a special body-cavity search room, (which incidentally led to quite an embarasing and interesting discussion with my twin daughters about personal hygiene and a slight adjustment to the rules we had them memorize about touching by strangers). But worst of all, since the suitcase did not actually open, the baggage inspector made a call to the FBI and ATF bomb squads which then segregated the family's suitcase (which btw was the only suitcase they provided for our educational family experience) and according to the advanced TSA regulations, had to blow it up, (since they could not otherwise mutilate the luggage, break off the locks and put one of those nice little advisory stickers on it), which we had to simulate out in the backyard with a few M-80s and other fireworks. The girls started crying. They became so hysterical by the whole experience that we could not even get them in the car when the time came to actually take our trip, and so we had to cancel the whole thing at the last minute, losing over $7,000 in airfare and hotel charges that we could not recoup do to the last minute cancellations. We've now spent an additional $3,000 to pay for the girls therapy and medication over the past year since this incident occurred, and the psychologists have told us that this will affect them for life, so much for their college fund and our retirement. Then, to top it all off, when we tried to use to playmobil phone to call the company to ask for reimbursement, as you might expect, of course the damn thing didn't even work; neither did our efforts to e-mail them using the computer screen on the baggage checkpoint; and our real-life efforts to contact them to obtain re-imbursement have also likewise been ignored. Worse yet, we had the product tested and found out that it was positive for both lead paint and toxic chemicals, having been manufactured in China by workers holding formerly American jobs, so now we all have cancer and have been given only another year or so to live. My advice - educating your kids about airport security with this toy may actually be more harmful to them than just packing them in the damn luggage with some bottled water & hoping they survive. :)

1,451 of 1,523 people found the following review helpful:
Educational and Fun!
By Zampano - New York City
Thank you Playmobil for allowing me to teach my 5-year old the importance of recognizing what a failing bureaucracy in a ever growing fascist state looks like. Sometimes it's a hard lesson for kids to learn because not all pigs carry billy clubs and wear body armor. I applaud the people who created this toy for finally being hip to our changing times. Little children need to be aware that not all smiling faces and uniforms are friendly. I noticed that my child is now more interested in current events. Just the other day he asked me why we had to forfeit so much of our liberties and personal freedoms and I had to answer "well, it's because the terrorists have already won". Yes, they have won.

I also highly recommend the Playmobil "farm fencing" so you can take your escorted airline passenger away and fence him behind bars as if he were in Guantanamo Bay.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

If you've never heard of Taylor Mali, you're missing something wonderful. He's a spoken word poet and teacher and has a bunch of You Tube pieces where he performs on stages like Def Poetry Jam and others much more formal where you can see the likes of former US poet laureate Billy Collins setting up for his turn at the mic (fascinating to watch Collins' facial expressions while Taylor does his thing).

One of my favorites, though they're all great, is the poem titled "I Could Be a Poet". Where was Mali when I needed him, when I thought all poetry had to be read out loud in that lilting and incredibly snobbish and stilted way as if to put a steel door up where only a chosen few were allowed to enter? I love that he's come along to stand poetry on its conventional and parched ear.

When I was in grad school, I spent a semester teaching a poetry workshop at Valhalla Prison to female inmates. It was one of the most gratifying things I've ever done.

Without question, every single one of my students was a teacher to me. Despite their situation - the inability to simply breathe fresh air (even the exercise yard was indoors), constant lights and alarms in the night, the "Ninja Turtles" assault troops ready to tear apart cells, strangers doing cavity checks, other humiliations - they taught me courage, optimism, the richness of a good laugh, the utter surprise to hear that I thought about them when I'd gone back out through the gates, past the razor wire, down the interstate to home. It seemed like the only thing they took for granted was their invisibility.

I like to think they don't feel invisible anymore because a bunch of us got together and they discovered they have a way with words. They have a voice.

And I discovered I have a way with teaching. I'm looking all over for a teaching job these days but, even with the MFA, I'm not certified and the private schools and colleges are full up, it seems, the colleges in particular looking for fresh young blood with books and a name. I can't do much about the years but I'm working on the rest thanks to the Dodge Foundation and some wonderful friends. And some of that optimism I take from my former students that there's always a chance to turn things around no matter how many years have gone by.

What could be a better calling?

For anyone who questions this most noble (and humbling) of professions, here's another great Taylor Mali poem:

Has this ever happened to you?
You work very very horde on a paper for English clash
And still get a very glow raid on it like a D or even a D=
and all because you are the word¹s liverwurst spoiler.
Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence.

Now this is a problem that affects manly, manly students all over the world.
I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term
that my English torturer in my sophomoric year,
Mrs. Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague.
And that¹s all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague.

Not just anal community colleague,
because I wouldn¹t be happy at anal community colleague.
I needed a place that would challenge me, challenge me menstrually,
I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation,
I know this makes me sound like a stereo,

but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal collegue.
So I needed to improvement or gone would be my dream
of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison
(in Prison, New Jersey).
So I got myself a spell checker

and figured I was on Sleazy Street.
But there are several missed aches
that a spell chucker can¹t can¹t catch catch.
For instant, if you accidentally leave out word
your spell exchequer won¹t put it in you.

And God for billing purposes only
you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling
your spell Chekhov might use a word
that you had absolutely no detention of using.
Because what do you want it to douche?

It only does what you tell it to douche.
You¹re the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit.
It just goes to show you how embargo
one careless clit of the mouth can be.
Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint.

The teacher took the paper I had written on A Sale of Two Titties
I¹m not joking, I¹m totally cereal.
And read it out loud to all of my assmates.
It was the most humidifying experience of my life,
being laughed at pubically.

So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice:
One: There is no prostitute for careful editing of your own work,
no prostitute whatsoever.
And three: When it comes to proofreading,
the red penis your friend.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Storm, in the lineup of The Usual Suspects I posted awhile back, suddenly began to drop off noticeable weight a couple of weeks ago. The next day he couldn't keep food down. The day after that he stopped eating altogether. Having to attend a funeral followed by the vet's day off, I got the next available appointment.

That morning I took Storm out back to get a stool sample. The poop that emerged got stuck leaving Storm tearing around the yard trying to shake it loose, the clump smacking against his hind legs and tail making an awful mess. I ran inside to get gloves, grabbed his collar and gently pulled on the poop. A clump about two feet long came sliding out like on those National Geographic calving videos and I stood there horrified that he'd pooped out his intestines.

Between sobs, I cleaned us both up, put the whole clump in a plastic bag, grabbed a leash, and headed for the car, expecting the worst.

The waiting room was filled. I left the bag with the receptionist and we worked our way to a bench in the corner. At least there was the distraction of chatter about the dogs, cats and one goat there with ailments or injuries or needing a checkup.

Then the vet tech called out, "Skye? Are you missing a rug or a really long stuffed toy?"

It turned out that all my rugs were present and accounted for but, blood work, x-rays, a ravenous but exhausted dog and $206 later, an inventory count back home noted a missing two-foot-long furry.

It could have been worse. Even if he'd made it through a second such surgery (a couple of years ago he was cut open from stomach to butt to recover a very long knotted up strand of used gauze he'd swiped from the garbage), it would have cost me a (so to speak) shitload of money if he hadn't pooped it out in the nick of time.

Not quite funny yet, the blood work came back that his body isn't absorbing protein. A case of special canned food, liquid triglycerides, Prednizone and a vet check in two weeks, the jury's still out.

The poor receptionist whose job was to sort through the two-foot-long poop cheerfully told me about her own nut job dog. She said he ate a basketball but nobody knew for sure (as long as he kept eating they weren't going to cut him open) while he pooped and spit up pieces of rubber until one big piece came out with the word SPAULDING printed across it.

These "kids" as I call them really know how to pull our heartstrings or none of us would be pulling poop out of their butts or cleaning up after they puked all over the Oriental rug just back from the cleaners, again.

My big kids, two Siberian Huskies and six German Shepherds I've had over the years, are giving way to smaller ones, my daughter's introduction of the Japanese Shiba Inu that looks like a fox or a German Shepherd pup that never grows up. I like that they can be bathed in the sink and don't take up the whole bed. But they're an even more primitive breed than Huskies and very pack oriented. Instead of pulling poop, I'm pulling them off each other. Good thing they have curled tails for handles.

I've been fostering Shibas for the past year and adopted two of the fosters from the NYC Shiba Rescue, http://nycshibarescue.org/ These two are also in The Usual Suspects lineup, but I've been feeling a bit misty-eyed today and wanted to get this on the blog.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

- The little pieces of toilet paper on the floor of public bathrooms that stick to my shoes when I leave.

- When peeing in the woods, worrying about getting poison ivy on my butt.

- Having to maintain strong thigh muscles to squat in public bathrooms and to prevent poison ivy on my butt.

- Old people who buy enormous cars and can't see over the steering wheel. (Maybe it's for the really wide rear window to show off their hat collection.)

- People who don't know the difference between "their" and "there".

- Ice cream containers that have all been sneakily shrunken in size (other products, too.)

- The strange phenomenon that young guys can wear pants halfway down their boxers that stay put and older guys with beer guts and butt cracks can't keep their pants up when the waistline is up to their necks. (Both bother me.)

- The little hard brown shells in popcorn that get stuck between my teeth and gums.

- The societal impression that only men fart or belch or that men have such an excess of saliva, they must spit on a regular basis.

- Being afraid the suction thingy at the dentist's will suck up my tongue (and embarrassed by the awful sound it makes, like my mouth is farting.)

- Having men as total strangers come up and tell me I shouldn't "chew" my fingernails but let them grow long and beautiful and have nail polish on them when, first, it's none of their friggin' business and, second, I TRIM my nails to be able to play the friggin' guitar.

- Super pointy shoes by male designers when I've yet to find a similar pointy foot in all humanity.

- When I've been talking rather colorfully all night and my date takes me to a bar - someone says one little four-letter-word and my date yells back, "Hey buddy, knock it off! Can't you see there's a lady present?"

- When people in the audience shout "PLAY FREE BIRD!!" I hate Free Bird.

Monday, January 12, 2009

There's something really wrong about this. From the souvenir shop of the Woodstock Museum at Bethel Woods, the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival:A "mini-latte make-love-not-war mug"http://www.shopbethelwoods.com/store/product/17866/MUG---MINI-LATTE-MAKE-LOVE-NOT-WAR-PHOTO-MUG/

I grew up in the Sixties. I went to Woodstock - the original (who would have thought I'd have to clarify that.) Lattes? WTF? Next they'll be warning us about the bad brown antacid.

Just to be clear:There was no merchandise for sale at Woodstock (or Coke or Pepsi for that matter.)Few people even thought to bring a camera.There was no valet parking.No "seating".Few porta-johns.Plenty of trees.No showers.Plenty of rain (and lakes.)No gourmet food.No health food.No food in general.No bottled water.Plenty of drugs.A fair amount of people.Some pretty spectacular bands.

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Who On Earth is This Skye Person Anyway?

I am a 2008 Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Festival Poet, Director of the Delaware Valley Poetry Festival, Founder of People's Poetry @ the Rat, a visiting poet/writer in schools and colleges, a featured poet and writer at readings around the NYC/Philadelphia areas and workshop teacher. In addition I do readings and lecture on healing from domestic violence through the writing arts - finding one's own voice. I mentor writers one-on-one in craft, as a writing coach and editing manuscripts.I hold private craft classes in poetry and creative non-fiction and am also working in the field of freelance photojournalism to convey some stories without using a single word. Finally I am an accomplished singer/songwriter and perform with my guitar in venues and festivals including First Fridays Frenchtown, Bastille Fete, Bikes & Bluegrass Weekend, Martins on Main and at the National Hotel, Frenchtown, NJ. Besides my own songs, I cover Springsteen, CS&N, Dylan and others.